The Manticore had cloaked long ago. The only thing that would set them apart visually is the light bending around the ship, but in the blackness of space, that was very difficult to notice.
The main Manticore merc fleet had splitten up outside of the sol system. One half, commanded by the battlecruiser Nova headed towards Mars to disurpt convoys of minerlas heading towards pluto to destroy any convoys and tradeships that got near to the planet. Also to make sure that the water shipments from ice crystals outside of the system were disrupted.
The second half of the fleet, commanded by the Decimator steamed to the Ourt cloud, intent on catching the mineral shipments coming from Mars.
Boh fleets consisted of 1 battlecruiser, and 15 frigates. The Batterlcruisers were 900m in length, and the frigates varying 200-300 meters.
The fleet had warped into the system edge, and now sped thier way to the objectives. It would take them aprox 6 hours for both fleets tor each thier destinations....
Jordaxia
09-01-2005, 01:04
Trade went on as usual in the eternal Empire. hundreds of ships passed through each day, sometimes thousands, taking the safe hyperspace routes through the minefields. In the PMC, nothing was occuring that was worthy of notice, paying an almost passive attention to the local universe. There had been numerous pirate attacks earlier, but the trade vessels had managed to fend the attacks off. It was believed to have come from Varuna, an inevitability of allowing so many mercenaries to operate in the Empire. But the mercenaries had their uses, and it was a simple matter to track them down if they weren't hidden. Sensor buoys had not picked up anything interesting. One had a strange piece of footage that showed an asteroid distorting wildly, but it was not a particularly good piece of footage, and none of the pirates in the Empire had a cloaking device, so the recording was discarded as corrupt and useless. Even if it was a cloaked vessel -though the concept was laughable-, it would stray into the minefields if it didn't watch itself. They were capable of detecting stray gravitational wells, something that no cloaking device could hide effectively. But that was something that didn't need considered at this moment. The Eternal Empire had no enemies.
From far within the solar system, a water shipment was being brought in. Since the Empire had no ability to magic the water from nowhere, it had to be imported. The water shipments were usually prime targets for pirates, given the price that it could fetch on the market. As such, they travelled quickly, and moderately armed, so they could sting the pirates, and escape cleanly. Twelve ships were present in the convoy, in a line behind the other, heading straight for Pluto. Captain Daigu was at the front of the convoy, in the merchant ship "patent pending". He'd worked for the trading company for most of his adult life, and had been victim to several pirate attacks, but still lacked the training of a military officer, or Warrior caste member. As he glanced over the readings from the sensor, everything appeared to be normal, and the route ahead was quite clear. No stray asteroids to steer around, or similar. Floating into the air, Daigu retired to his quarters until they reached Pluto.
All was dead silent inside the command ship Decimator. The Manticore captian sat in his chair and peered outside the window. The Decimator was bound for the Ourt comet cloud, where mineral freighters would have to pass through.
The Decimator and her fleet silently glided across the blackness of space, easlessly. All systems were powered down, except for impulse engines and life support, they were flying visually, in order to keep down as many sensor traces as possible.
The sight hit the captian and the helmsmen like a ton of bricks. There was a mine field directly off the bow of the fleet. The captian turned on the com to his fleet and chirpted and twittered warnings about the mine field. He told them to engage the sensors, so they could maneuver around the fields. This slowed the fleet down by much.
The fleet heading towards the Pluto, to intercept freighters, was well on its way. They had spotted the convoy long ago, and were now moving to intercept it.
They got as close as they dared, keeping up with the quick convoy, staying at its side 2000m off starboard. The Manticore ships then started to position themselves around the fleet. The command ship Nova hovered directly above the center of the convoy, 800m above the middle ship. The 15 other frigates moved aswell. Three frigates formed a triangle, 200m apart, 400m off the front of the ship. Three more frigates did the same to the rear. The other 9 ships spread themselves out evenly across the length of the convoy.
Finally they charged thier Ion cannons, but didnt fire yet.